Contemporary World Music delivers the sounds of all regions from every continent, including reggae, worldbeat, neo-traditional, world fusion, Balkanic jazz, African film, Bollywood, Arab swing and jazz, and other genres such as traditional music - Indian classical, fado, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, gagaku, and more.

World Music from Alexander Street supports the teaching and research of musical traditions from around the world, with coverage of music from almost 170 countries and over 1,000 cultural groups. In addition to an extensive folk music collection, World Music features content from a host of genres - reggae, hip-hop, rap, electronic, spoken word, and more. Includes Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries and Contemporary World Music.

Film and Video Online

Since the invention of the moving image in the 1890's, British Pathé began recording every aspect of global culture and news. With their unique combination of information and entertainment, British Pathé's documentaries, newsreels, serials and films changed the way the world saw itself forever. All 85,000 newsreels are now searchable and viewable on YouTube.

Documentary films of music and dance performances filmed by Robert Garfias (UCLA Ethnomusicology, 1965) in China, Korea, The Philippines, North India, South India, the Middle East, Turkey, Europe, Africa, and the Americas during 1966-1982.

The EVIA Digital Archive Project is a a joint initiative of Indiana University and the University of Michigan to establish a repository of ethnographic video recordings to support scholars in the ethnographic disciplines, with a special focus on the fields of ethnomusicology, folklore, anthropology, and dance ethnology.

Ethnographic Video Online, a resource for the study of human culture and behavior, covers every region of the world and features the work of many of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century, including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, and more. Users can browse by All Videos, Ethnographer, Geographic Location, Cultural Group, Subjects, Date, People, and Content Type. The current release release includes 825 videos totalling roughly 506 hours.

Filmakers Library Online provides award-winning documentaries with relevance across the curriculum—race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature, and more. It presents points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide. The current release provides 1,018 titles, equaling approximately 803 hours.

Folkstreams' goal is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures and give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers and focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities. The site includes streaming video with essays about the traditions and filmmaking, transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites. There is also a Google map showing the location of all the films currently on Folkstreams.

Additional Resources

British Library Sounds is the result of a development project to increase access to the British Library Sound Archive's extensive collections. The British Library Sound Archive holds over 3.5 million audio recordings, including one of the world's largest collections of recordings variously described as traditional, folk or 'world' music. British Library Sounds presents 50,000 recordings and their associated documentation from the Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds, including 268 ethnographic wax cylinders. (The collection guide to the Ethnographic Wax Cylinder Collection is available on pdf.) And make sure and check out their Playback & Recording Equipment collection. It shows images of more than 90 machines from the British Library's collection of playback and recording devices, charting the history of sound reproduction technology.

The DPLA is a free, open-source resource that makes a number of digital collections and archives across the country available in one place. DPLA partners include the Smithsonian, the National Archives, New York Public Library, the University of Virginia, Harvard, Digital Library of Georgia, Minnesota Digital Library, Mountain West Digital Library, the University of California, and others.

The Endangered Archives Programme aims to contribute to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration worldwide. Archival material includes newspapers and periodicals, audio and audiovisual material, photographs, rare printed books and manuscripts.

Almost 200,000 tracks collected from sound archives across Europe are now available on Europeana Radio. Listeners can browse a wide range of sound recordings (Classical, Folk, and Popular music), play them on random mode, and even tag the musical genres recognised. Indeed all users can become archivists by tagging the musical genres of the recordings whilst listening to them.

An interactive website that allows users to listen to and learn about more than 6,000 songs from 1,000 cultures — including many from Alan Lomax’s personal collection. The website is organized by map and by culture. The samples were digitized from hard copies at the Library of Congress and include 1978 field recordings from the Kullu culture in Himachal Pradesh, India; harvest songs from 1954 Romania; and a ballad to John Henry from Asheville, N.C., in 1941, recorded by Lomax.

Our Songs is a co-production between eight Indigenous television broadcasters across the globe who are partners in the World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Network (WITBN). From traditional music, modern interpretations of traditional songs, rap, acoustic, folk songs, to rock, forty-three Indigenous artists around the globe deliver a variety of music and languages.

Listen to worldwide radio stations by spinning a digital globe. In addition to the live streaming feature, it also lets you listen to historical radio broadcasts and a selection of jingles and station identifiers from around the world.

The mission of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research is to document the history of Southern California and the Los Angeles metropolitan region through oral history interviews. The center gives information and advice regarding the practice of oral history to UCLA students, faculty, and staff as well as to the broader Los Angeles community. It offers campus and community workshops and provides instruction on oral history methodology to UCLA classes.

Videos

UCLA Library

The mission of the UCLA Library is to provide access to and delivery of information resources to UCLA students, faculty, and staff in support of the research and instructional mission of the university. Relying on its highly skilled staff, the Library encourages innovation, capitalizes on appropriate technologies, forges effective partnerships and aggressively promotes excellence.